


don't get too close, it's dark inside

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [36]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comfort, Disabled Character, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra did a number on Bucky, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve takes care of Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 21:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2040810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>Hey</i>," Steve says, and his hand's catching the side of Bucky's face, pressure just barely there to turn, to see, "hey, look at me. It's okay." Frowning face worried eyes jarred out of sleep. "You're home, it's okay, it was a dream. Just breathe." </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Fuck.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	don't get too close, it's dark inside

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> This was on two Hurt/Comfort Bingo prompts: asphyxiation, mind control

He is awake. Has been for some time. No knowledge why; no mission yet. Space surrounding - dim, not dark. Empty. Unfinished. Concrete walls, floor, single drain. Two tables: weapons and tools. 

No mission yet. Just waiting. Bent-knees, dropped to crouch near one wall, arms resting on knees, head on arms. Least energy to maintain to most efficient response. Waiting. 

(Wrong, something's wrong, off, expanding noise like radio-static lingering at the back of thought - )

Then there is - 

\- time slipping-cutting-glitch - light. Fluorescent. Bright, harsh. Others - STRIKE, other bodies, irrelevant details. A man, a man they bring, restrained and injured (left shoulder, left hip), light-haired, unfamiliar uniform. Likely concussion. The man speaks. Repeats one word, two syllables, meaningless. 

( _Wrong_ , static hisses and isn't static more voices more screaming more - ) 

And slip, glitch again and the others are gone except for the man and orders in the voice that gives them, calm and familiar, bringing the world into focus and purpose, silencing the static, silencing . . . 

Orders. _Subdue. Obtain compliance._ Not complex. 

Restraints gone: not relevant. The man is - 

( _no_ )

The man is strong, quick, adequately trained, but insufficient for significant difficulty. Significant resistance, endurance of pain. Key is - 

( _no, no,_ God _, no, please, no_ )

Air. Now his left hand is around the man's throat, the man's back to the wall. Intention: control, not death, unconsciousness. The man's hands scratch and scrape at his wrist, both hands, injured and uninjured; their pressure is decreasing, the man's strength diminished. Initially with purpose; now purpose is gone. The man has torn one nail against the seams in the metal. When allowed, briefly, to breathe the man begs - English, familiar words, _please_ and _stop_ and others, and two syllables used as if a name or designation, but unknow - 

Unknown. 

( _"God Bucky_ please _, please -_ ") 

Unknown? 

( _no wrong wrong **wrong** -_ )

Un - 

 

His eyes are open. For a second his body is too far away, he can't move it; he stares at sheets-pillow-bedside-table-moonlight-wall, stares at two arms, flesh-metal, palm up palm down and he _can't breathe_. 

Until he can with noise and pain and he shoves himself up to sit, to find . . . something, touch blanket touch shoulder touch things that are real, here, exist, so there's something different, something different between this, here, and . . . and. 

He can't breathe. He wasn't the one choking so why can't _he_ breathe? 

And Steve's already there, no, Steve's always there, Steve's awake and sitting up, one hand on his left shoulder and saying his name, his name _oh God_ he wants to throw up, and then Steve's pulling at him, one hand pulling him back by his shoulder, the other reaching to catch his other arm, " _Bucky_ , stop it, come here. You're awake. You're safe. Come here." 

_Awake_. Dream. Jesus fucking Christ, dream, not real, not lost-fragmented-memory, never happened, _dream_ and it doesn't really help doesn't really stop him from - doesn't make it easier to stop from pulling back, pulling away, _no, no you're not safe, it's not - get away -_

Stupid, stupid _fucking_ \- 

" _Hey_ ," Steve says, and his hand's catching the side of Bucky's face, pressure just barely there to turn, to see, "hey, look at me. It's okay." Frowning face worried eyes jarred out of sleep. "You're home, it's okay, it was a dream. Just breathe." 

_Fuck_. 

Humiliation bleeds fingers into the rest, twists into what's already turning into sickness and makes it worse, but he lets Steve pull him in because he can't breathe, because it makes it easier to breathe, half-curled up with his left arm caught against Steve's chest (going to bruise, maybe, _fuck_ ), Steve's hands on his rib, his hip, clutching at Steve's arm. Steve's cheek against his shoulder so Steve's exhaled breath hits his skin. 

Breathe. 

Harder than it should be. Never happened never will and yet and _yet_ it sticks, sticks to his head, sticks to his skin to pressure in his left hand, to everything and it's hard, and there's the thoughts digging in, worming in, _Jesus, Jesus, Steve, what are you doing here, near me, get away from me, what are you -_ and Bucky can't make them shut up. 

Steve moves a little, slides his one arm down and then up underneath Bucky's shirt to rest on his shoulder under the cloth, the other to pull Bucky back against him, wrapped around his waist, Bucky's back against Steve's shoulder. Bucky lets him, or at least doesn't resist. 

Steve kisses the side of his head, and then says, quietly, "Tell me?" and then, "Bucky, you're shaking and you're still not breathing right. Please, tell me." 

And the please gets under his skin like barbed wire and tears. But Bucky manages, "They had you. And they still had me." And that's all he can, he can't, _can't_ say more and his hands are closed so tight his right hand hurts. 

Steve tightens his arms and rests his forehead against the side of Bucky's head and it's quiet for a long time before he says, "You want to know what would have happened?" 

It takes a second. The words don't make sense, not even in a quiet voice. Steve shifts them both back so that he can lean against the headboard, both arms wrapped one on top of the other around Bucky's ribs, Steve's bent knees on either side of Bucky's hips and Steve's temple resting against his head. 

"They had no fucking idea what they were dealing with," Steve says, still quiet. "They never did. You couldn't kill me. They hurt you for knowing me, they tried to rip it out and it still didn't work. And I _know you_ , Bucky, and you know me, and it might've taken time and it might've fucked us both up even worse, but they'd've burned and we'd've been gone and it'd still be us. And you know I'm right. I know you. I wasn't wrong." 

Something knots up behind Bucky's ribs, hurts. He tries to grasp at something, some response, but Steve says, "Just pretend we already argued about how crazy and stupid I am for thinking that, okay?" He presses a kiss to Bucky's temple. "I'd kind of rather you think about getting your heart-rate back down." 

There has to be something to say to that, but it slips through Bucky's mind without staying; everything does, except the dissonance between wanting to give up and collapse and wanting to run, and he's too . . .something, something that matters, to run. 

"And it doesn't matter," Steve says. "They're gone, they're dead and you're here with me. You're safe." He reaches up to wrap his hand around Bucky's left one, pulls it up to kiss the knuckles, the faintest pressure. "With me," he says, "for me, all of it. And I know that enough for both of us." 

Eventually Bucky manages to say, "Stubborn idiot," around the knot in his chest and its twin in his throat. Barely. 

"Mmm," Steve says. He gently tugs at Bucky's arm one last time to turn sideways again, so that Bucky's head rests on his shoulder and Bucky's left arm covers his own side, knees pulled in - the way Bucky's far more likely to fall asleep again, as Bucky well knows. "Something I'm good at."

*****

It's hard to tell sometimes if Bucky's sleeping or if he's just checked out for a while, closed his eyes and let the mind's equivalent of a tuner spin to the static between stations. Even that's a kind of rest, better than awake and wound up, Steve knows; panic attacks mess up his body almost as much as his head, and at least with the metaphorical mental static nothing's making it worse. 

Either way by about three in the morning Bucky's eyes are closed and his breathing's slowed and softened and as much as his tension ever lets go, it has, leaning against Steve's shoulder, knees pulled in and arms folded against himself. 

Steve's pretty sure Bucky literally didn't notice the knife he reached for before finally settling, still in his hand with its sheathed blade lying along his right forearm. A lot of the time he doesn't. It's another thing Steve stores away for time to come when everything's sturdier and he can point out that security _blankets_ weren't good enough for Bucky, he needed security _daggers_. 

Well, some of them might as well be daggers. 

He's not really tired - well, he's not really _sleepy_ anymore. It's amazing how pissed off he can get at the inside of Bucky's own head, how much he can want to personify the damn thing so he can shake it until it gets the picture that it's really not helping, not anymore. And that all of the shit Bucky did not need to process in _dreams_ right now, that - that fear, that personal horror-story - is at the top of the list. 

It's also exactly the kind of thing Bucky's subconscious would use to dump all the guilt he doesn't need to feel, the nagging conviction he's got that he won't admit to even when it's winning against sanity, that he's a pollutant, a slow-contact poison Steve's stupid to keep near. 

It's not like Steve doesn't know it's still there. Bucky doesn't say it, because he knows Steve'll argue and the argument . . . takes Bucky's head places he doesn't want to go, and that's why Steve doesn't say anything either, and won't, unless Bucky does first. 

He won't let it stand. He's thought about it, a lot, and he's pretty sure no matter how bad the argument is for destabilizing the world, wrecking the inside of Bucky's head, it's better than letting even a sliver of a hint stand that Steve agrees. 

He doesn't. And he believes what he said, all of it - more, honestly, but what he said is already at the far edge of what Bucky'll even think about believing. Steve doesn't know what the block is, why exactly Bucky can't even look right at the immensity of what he's managed to do, what that means about him, about what was and is there despite everything HYDRA ever tried to do. 

_We would have torn them apart from the inside out and maybe it'd've killed us, but we'd've died fighting and it would have been us,_ us _. They failed. It took a long time to bite them and I'm sorry, that's on me, but they failed._

It occurs to Steve that he should figure out where Natasha is, and see if she's willing to talk. Given how well Barton was doing the last time Steve saw him, she might know something he doesn't yet. 

For now he lets his eyes close because even if he can't sleep, rest works for him, too. 


End file.
